


avium

by PoisonedMind



Series: Spooky Week 2018 [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Birds, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Horror, M/M, Supernatural Elements, description of major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 14:08:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16430894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonedMind/pseuds/PoisonedMind
Summary: “Morning to you too,” Dan mumbles. His voice is scratchy and Phil loves it. He doesn’t ever want to wake up and not hear that voice. Dan’s scream echoes in his mind.“I had a nightmare,” he blurts out.“About what?” Dan asks.“You.”





	avium

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags and stay safe! That said this is the second fic of Spooky Week 2018!

“Like, I love your family and all but this is a bit much.”

Phil loves his family too, obviously, but he has to agree with Dan. When his parents had called and told them they had booked them a night at a special resort as a welcome home from tour gift, Phil hadn’t exactly expected a night in a house that toed the line of being an actual mansion. And it was in the middle of nowhere, a forest sporting all the colours of autumn in its back garden. 

“Also, why does your family all think nature is the most ideal place for holidays?” Dan continues. 

“Australia turned out to be pretty fun, though,” Phil says. “Except for the mosquitoes.”

Dan turns to look at him. 

“True,” he says and Phil can see a small smile in the corner of his lips. There’s excitement simmering behind the brown in his eyes too. The prospect of having time completely to themselves with no other intent than to relax is almost a little overwhelming after months of touring the world. 

He gestures towards the house. “Shall we?” 

They walk up the cobbled path, Dan pulling their luggage. There are small flowerbeds all around the walls of the house, lavender and other purple flowers breathing their last breaths in the autumn sun. 

The plants in the pots framing the front door are brown and withering. 

As they walk in, the big wooden door creaking, they are greeted by a short man who Phil presumes to be the owner. 

“Hello, Mr. Lester and Mr. Howell! I’m Carl Smith,” The man claps his hands and smiles, big and toothy. Phil notes his accent but he can’t place it. 

“Hello, Mr. Smith,” Phil says and smiles politely. Dan clears his throat beside him before greeting the man too. 

“I have left a little booklet with all the info you may need about this place,” Mr. Smith waves to the small table at the door where a pamphlet indeed lies, “I am here to greet you and make sure you arrive here nicely. You did, yes?” Mr. Smith looks first Phil and then Dan deeply in the eyes. 

“We did,” Dan agrees. He smiles and casts a quick glance in Phil’s direction as Mr. Smith continues.

“Great to hear, gentlemen! There is all kinds of food in the fridge and wine in the wine cooler. Now, I must leave you alone but if you have any further inquiries you may call my assistant. Number in booklet.” He bows and opens the door and just as he’s walking out, he swirls around and says, “Have fun here, Mr. Lester and Mr. Howell!”

The door shuts heavily behind him. Phil turns to Dan. 

“Okay then,” he says. Dan’s looking at him with wide eyes.

“That was weird, wasn’t it?”

“It was a little strange, yeah.”

They burst out laughing then. 

When they sober up again and look around to take in the house, Phil finds that it’s actually quite beautiful. It’s rustic; walls of grey rocks with dark red wooden pillars in the corners and rafters running across the ceiling. There’s a staircase in the middle of the room and the lower floor is one big open space with a modern kitchen to their right and a lounge to their left. There’s a floor-to-ceiling glass door looking out onto a patio framed by the colourful forest. Hanging on the wall in the lounge is the biggest flat screen Phil has ever seen. 

“Okay I take it back. Your family can book us holidays all the time,” Dan says.

Upstairs are two bedrooms and a big bathroom and they don’t need to communicate as they decide on the bedroom closest to the toilet. 

After dumping their stuff in the bedroom for future Dan and Phil to worry about, they wander downstairs again. 

“What time is it?” Phil asks. Dan just raises his eyebrows.

“You have a phone, Phil. It does a wonderful job of showing the time.” Phil huffs and pulls out his phone. 

“But actually, what time is it?” A suspiciously innocent look rests on Dan’s face as he asks.

“Idiot.” Phil shoves him in the shoulder. “It’s almost three though. You should make us lunch.” Phil smiles wide. Dan glares at him. Then Phil turns on the pout instead. 

“Alright, you spoiled rat, but you’re making dinner.” 

“Fine.” He will figure out a way to make Dan help him with it later anyway. 

As Dan rummages around in the kitchen, Phil snoops around the lounge. It’s full of weird, expensive looking ornaments and actual sculptures. There’s a specific one, placed on the table with the pamphlet, that captures his attention. It’s a bird. Made of what looks like gold and he thinks the house seems grandiose enough that it just might be. 

It stands there majestically, looking slightly to the kitchen, wings marked out on its body with such delicacy Phil has to lean closer to make sure it’s not actual feathers.

He reaches out and pets its golden head. For a second, it seems like the bird blinks and stares at him. He pulls back as if it burned him. The bird doesn’t move. Of course it doesn’t move, Phil thinks, it’s a sculpture. 

They eat lunch out on the patio and Phil figures they should get a reward for actually choosing to be outside. It’s a bit chilly, the wind pinching their skin but the fresh air is good. Dan’s cheeks are pink and his eyes are glowing and his lips are stretched wide as he laughs out loud and Phil loves this. 

There’s a bird chirping somewhere within the forest. 

“This is nice.” He shifts his foot to rest it beside Dan’s under the table. 

“It is.” Dan smiles and presses his foot against Phil’s. 

Another bird starts chirping. 

They play a silent round of footsie, both of them fighting back smiles and Phil tries to savour this. He wants a picture of this moment, autumn painting nature in brilliant reds and yellows, the light of the afternoon sun caught in Dan’s eyes and the wind making his curls dance. He wants to be able to pull this moment out and remember it in all it’s colourful happiness when things get rough. 

Even more birds join the choir of chirping, this time sounding much closer than the others. 

Dan says, “Who knew nature could be this loud?” 

“Yeah. Let’s go back inside.”

Phil takes a moment as he closes the glass door after them to just breathe in. A wind picks up a few fallen leaves and they dance in the air, almost resembling birds. The wind reaches Phil then and it’s icy. He shivers and closes the door immediately. 

Dan is staring at the bird sculpture when Phil walks to the couch with two cups of hot chocolate later. It’s not what they usually go for but he feels like they can treat themselves today. Plus, it seems seasonally appropriate. 

“This is one thicc birb,” Dan mumbles. Phil snorts.

“It kinda creeps me out,” he says. “Feels like it’s staring, y’know?”

Dan nods. “Yeah. Maybe it’s watching our every move.” He wiggles his eyebrows dramatically.

“Shut up!” Phil laughs and ignores the quiet shiver running down his spine. 

Along the wall with the telly there’s a bookcase full of different board games and they end up digging out a vintage version of Guess Who. 

“Is your character very horny?”

“ _Dan._ ”

“It’s a valid question!”

“Yes, they are. Does your character have a pornstache?“

“And you’re berating me, Philly? No. Would your character think twice about killing innocent London pigeons?"

“No, definitely not.”

As the horizon slowly but steadily pulls the sun down, the sky turns from blue to pink to orange to red and they sit in the lounge with their drinks and a game, Ludo now, and the lamps are warming up the room in a yellow glow. 

The wind is picking up outside, howling when it catches on the roof. 

“Think it’s gonna storm?”

“Maybe.”

When Dan starts just going after Phil’s green tokens instead of trying to win, Phil decides it’s time for dinner. 

“How long a delivery time do you think there is on takeout?”

He’s half joking half actually considering just ordering something. He feels too lazy to put in the effort of actually cooking but Dan glares at him and says, “Nuh-uh, mate. No getting out of this one. You’re making dinner.”

Phil makes sure to sigh dramatically as he makes a show of getting up. 

“At least come help me decide what to make.”

He ends up roping Dan into helping him cook, too. 

“It’s been a long time since we made dinner together like this, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Kinda nice.” Dan smiles and bumps his shoulder into Phil’s. They’re standing side by side at the counter, cutting up vegetables for a stir-fry. 

When the ingredients are sizzling in the pan, Dan hovering over them with his spatula as his weapon of choice, Phil goes to set the table in the lounge. 

There’s a bird sitting on one of the chairs on the patio. 

He doesn’t notice it at first but then he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. A bird on a piece of outdoor furniture is not exactly unusual but there’s something about this particular bird, he can’t put his finger on it. 

It’s big and the feathers are midnight black. Phil thinks it looks terrifyingly beautiful as it sits there. 

He starts walking to the kitchen to fetch some cups but the bird is following him with its gaze. 

It doesn’t even blink. 

Phil stops and stares back. 

There’s that shiver running down his spine again. He’s not usually scared of birds but it’s unnerving the way this one is staring directly at him, calculating, as if it’s not just looking but observing.

He opens the glass door and tries to shoo it away, no harm done with that; it’ll find another nice place to sit. It doesn’t look particularly scared as it takes off, more just pissed off. Phil doesn’t know how a bird can look pissed off but he’s certain it was. 

When he walks back with the cups there are two birds sitting on the chair. Both staring directly at him. 

Phil shooes them away, too.

Then there are three birds sitting there, close together and all just _staring._ At Phil. He’s starting to think that this surely can’t be entirely normal bird behavior. 

He walks into the kitchen again just as Dan is taking their dinner off the heat. 

“Dan.”

“What?” Dan doesn’t turn around.

“Do birds take revenge?”

“What? What are you on about?”

Phil looks back towards the lounge but his eyes catch on the golden bird sculpture. It seems like it’s looking at him too. “The birds! I shooed one away because it was staring weirdly at me. Like. Intensely. And then it came back with friends. And now all the birds are looking at me.”

“All the birds?”

“Yes!”

He knows it sounds weird but it’s not like it’s the weirdest thing he’s ever told Dan. 

Dan’s eyes flit across Phil’s face and whatever he finds there seems enough to convince him. Phil grabs Dan’s arm and drags him into the lounge so he can see it for himself. 

There aren’t just three birds sitting on the chair anymore.

At least twenty birds are out there, sitting on every piece of furniture on the patio and some are just standing on the ground, right in front of the glass door. 

And they’re all staring directly at them. 

“Phil, what the fuck.”

“I don’t know.” He has trouble finding his voice, the whole scene looks like something from a horror movie. The last light from the dying sun illuminates the sky in gloomy hues, giving everything on the ground abnormally long and stretched out shadows. The birds are completely still; he could mistake them for statues if it wasn’t for the way their gaze followed every little movement.

“Did we spill some food out there?” Dan walks closer to the glass. The birds all turn their heads to follow him in one synchronized move. Dan yelps and pulls the curtains closed.

“Did we suddenly get transported into _The Birds_ or something? Will Hitchcock stand outside the door with a camera if we walk out?” Dan’s voice is high and his eyes are wide. Phil thinks he probably looks just as spooked. 

“Is this normal?” Phil asks. Dan takes a few deep breaths then looks him in the eye.

“I think we just spilled some food out there and they’re just waiting for more,” Dan says. Phil knows they didn’t. At least he’s pretty sure but he will happily take Dan’s explanation over his own. He doesn’t want to think there’s anything unnatural happening. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

They eat dinner with the telly turned on. Phil doesn’t want to listen to the eerie silence. 

It’s completely dark outside as they wash up and Phil doesn’t bother looking behind the closed curtains to see if the birds are still there. As he turns to walk upstairs, he sees the sculpture shine in the pale moonlight coming in through the windows. 

It’s not looking in the direction of the kitchen anymore. Phil wonders when Dan could’ve moved it.

As he’s brushing his teeth, Dan walks into the bathroom.

“I looked,” he says casually. 

Phil stops brushing and tries to catch Dan’s eyes in the mirror but Dan is looking down and fiddling with his own toothbrush. He doesn’t elaborate and Phil can’t figure out if that’s a good or a bad thing. 

“Are they gone?” He kind of doesn’t want Dan to answer. Not knowing if they’re still there holds open the opportunity for the birds to have taken off. For it to just be another weird thing happening to him. 

Dan finally looks up.

“No.”

He can’t ignore the cold shiver snaking down his spine this time. 

Dan continues, “There’s a lot more sitting out there now. It looks like they just keep coming.”

“Must’ve spilled more food than we thought, huh?” Phil knows they both know they didn’t spill any food out there. 

That night, they lie close together under the duvet, touching as much as is possible without actually cuddling. Dan sweats too much at night for sleeping cuddled together but Phil feels like they both need the reassuring touch. 

The lamps on the bedside tables stay turned on. 

Phil dreams of birds. Black and big and hauntingly beautiful as they seem to creep closer and closer. The dream shifts and he’s in the bed and there’s a bird sitting at the footboard. It’s not black like the other birds have been; it’s golden, shining in the pale light of the moon, eyes intently focused on Phil. 

It spreads out its wings, a wingspan big enough to reach across most of the room, and it screeches, a harrowing sound penetrating everything, Phil’s eardrums bursting, the windows exploding, and it leaps for Phil’s face.

Then he wakes up, sweating and panting. 

Dan is still asleep beside him. Warm puffs of air hit Phil’s face every time Dan breathes, they’re lying that close. 

It takes a few seconds before Phil registers the faint noises coming from somewhere downstairs. He can’t figure out what is making them but he’s pretty sure it’s not a noise that a house should make. 

As he gets up, he notices the soft morning light filtering in through the windows. He turns and watches how it hits Dan’s skin in patches, bathing him in a golden liquid light. 

He’s beautiful, Phil thinks. 

It’s not exactly the first time Phil notices that, he’s always thought Dan was pretty, but sometimes Phil gets overwhelmed. Dan is his. He’ll have an infinity of early mornings with sunlight warming a sleeping Dan and the thought hugs Phil’s heart so intensely it almost skips a beat. 

A loud noise rips Phil from his spot staring at Dan and he walks out in the hallway and towards the stairs. It’s not until he’s halfway down them that he realises the noises sound very much like a bird. But how the hell would a bird have managed to come inside? It can’t be a bird. 

He looks around the house but he can’t figure out what could’ve made the noises. It’s completely silent again, so quiet Phil’s still sleepy brain thinks up a scenario of him being the only living human left on Earth. 

He shudders at the thought and goose pimples run along his bare arms. That’s when he realises how cold it is.

Did they leave a window open or something?

They hadn’t opened any windows, they hadn’t opened anything except for the glass door in the lounge. A small knot of dread curls together in the pit of Phil’s stomach. 

He walks slowly towards the closed curtains. Light is shining through them, drawing intricate patterns on the floor. He takes a deep breath and pulls them back. 

The glass door is wide open. 

Did Dan leave it open last night?

Phil notes the fact that there aren’t any birds in sight. Everything is completely silent. 

The sun is in the sky but it’s not shining; it’s glowing, a deep orange red. Burning. Phil has never seen the sun look like that. 

He steps out onto the patio, transfixed. 

There’s no wind either, he realises absentmindedly. Not a leaf in the trees fencing the house is moving. The scene in front of him could be a still from a movie, a single frame taken out and painted on a canvas. 

Phil takes a step further towards the trees.

That’s when the sun erupts. 

He doesn’t know how else to describe it. Flames lick the surface, blue and bright, and the sun itself is a deep, deep purple, casting everything in an indigo blue. 

Phil is rooted in place.

The flames grow bigger, hungrier.

Then Dan screams.

Phil can feel it slicing through his whole body, the absolute terror of it carving into his bone marrow. 

He runs back upstairs faster than he’s ever moved before.

What he finds as he opens the bedroom door is a nightmare.

There are feathers everywhere, flying around in a wild, chaotic dance, catching the blue light of the flaming sun burning through the curtains. The blue light that illuminates the room in blue and blue and blue and Phil feels like it’s the only thing he can see for a while. As the feathers slowly float down, Phil can see the bed.

And it’s the only thing that doesn’t shine in blue.

Because it’s red.

The duvet is splattered in dark crimson, the bed frame scratched deep with red paint filling the gashes.

And Dan.

Dan is lying in the middle of it all, painted in a red so dark Phil wants to call it black. 

The sun burns up the sky and Phil wakes up. 

He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know how to breathe, he doesn’t know anything. His heart is hammering behind his ribs, painfully and violently. He wants to claw it out. 

Someone grunts beside him and Phil whips his head around, staring at the person lying on the pillow next to his. 

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he realises it’s Dan. His lips are parted and he’s drooling slightly and something inside Phil settles down. His lungs cooperate again.

Dan is asleep beside him, alive and peaceful. His hair is curly and all over the place and he’ll undoubtedly have a serious case of bedhead when he wakes. Phil lets the image of that settle in his mind, holds onto it as he lies down again and tries to relax.

He knows it was just a nightmare but it had felt different, way too real. His mind keeps playing out the bedroom scene again and again, a broken record, and Phil keeps trying to bury it behind the thought of Dan waking up, grumbling and grouchy. 

He doesn’t fall asleep again and when Dan mumbles something and scrunches up his face before blinking his eyes open half an hour later, he can’t stop himself from moving in close and connecting their lips, morning breath be damned. He needs to know Dan is okay.

“Morning to you too,” Dan mumbles. His voice is scratchy and Phil loves it. He doesn’t ever want to wake up and not hear that voice. Dan’s scream echoes in his mind.

“I had a nightmare,” he blurts out. Dan’s eyes snap up to meet Phil’s, alert and so, so warm. Phil wants to fall into them and just forget about everything.

“About what?” Dan asks.

“You.”

Dan reaches his hand up and cups Phil’s jaw. His thumb gently strokes his cheek. 

Phil elaborates, needing to push all of it out of his mind, “I woke up, or I dreamt that I woke up, and I heard something downstairs so I went to see what it was but there was nothing except the glass door was open and the sun was burning,” Phil swallows, voice shaking slightly as he continues, “I heard you scream and I ran upstairs and there were feathers everywhere and—“

“Hey,” Dan says softly. His thumb wipes at Phil’s cheek again and Phil realises he’s crying. The image of what he saw, of Dan lying lifeless in the bed, is burning in his mind.

“And you were in the bed but there was blood on everything and you were full of deep gashes and you were completely dead.” His voice breaks and there’s no actual sound as he says the last word but Dan understands, of course he does, and he moves in, wrapping himself around Phil like an octopus. 

He kisses Phil’s lips once, whispers, “I’m right here. Always,” and kisses him again. 

Phil hugs him closer and buries his face in Dan’s neck.

“I know.”

They lie like that for a while until Phil’s stomach rumbles and Dan smiles as he lifts his head.

“Hungry?” He asks.

“Maybe a little bit,” Phil says.

They get up, change out of pyjamas and into their clothes and go down to figure out what to make for breakfast.

It’s when they stand in the kitchen, Dan turning around and off-handedly saying, “It’s quite chilly in here, isn’t it?” that Phil feels the terror from his nightmare creeping back in.

He doesn’t want to, he really, really doesn’t want to, but he walks into the lounge. The curtains are still closed and he reaches out to pull them back with shaking hands. 

The glass door is wide open. 

“Dan.” His voice is flat. Dan comes to stand at his side immediately. 

“What?”

“The door was open,” Phil says. He feels strangely detached, like he’s floating somewhere just outside his own body. 

“It wasn’t open when I checked last night,” Dan says. Phil thinks he can hear an edge to Dan’s voice but he’s not entirely sure. 

Dan closes the door and turns around and they just stare at each other for a moment. Phil feels himself settling into his body again. 

Dan’s eyes widen then. 

“Phil?” 

“Yeah?”

“Was that bird statue always looking this way?”

“What?” He doesn’t wait for Dan to answer, instead he slowly turns around and finds the golden bird sculpture seemingly looking directly at them. 

“It was looking at the stairs when I went up last night,” Phil mumbles. “I thought you had moved it. It was looking at the kitchen when we arrived.”

“I haven’t touched it,” Dan says. There’s definitely an edge to his voice and Phil can feel his stomach clenching uncomfortably. They glance at each other.

“How about we skip breakfast and just go home?” Dan whispers. Phil doesn’t have any complaints to that suggestion. 

Dan calls a car and Phil packs up their stuff. As he walks down with the bag, he hears Dan’s voice saying they need a car _asap_. He doesn’t want to think about how long they’ll actually have to wait before a car will arrive out here, in the middle of nowhere. 

While they’re waiting, Phil calls Mr. Smith to tell him they’re leaving. When the man asks how they liked the stay, Phil automatically says, “Fine,” but the unease running under his skin, making his hands shake and heart beat just a little quicker makes him add on, “But there were a lot of birds and they wouldn’t really leave us alone.”

“Ah, the birds. Yes, some of our guests do complain about them sometimes. Did you not read the booklet I mentioned?”

“Eh, no?” Phil had just assumed it would contain info like the history of the house and such.

After hanging up, he casts an apprehensive look at the booklet lying on the table beside the door. The table where the golden bird sculpture is stood, still staring towards the lounge. 

He picks up the pamphlet and leafs through it. It seems like his assumptions prove to be somewhat true, pages detailing the origin of the house and the first owners filling up the small booklet.

Until he lands on a page titled _Avium_ with a picture of the bird sculpture. 

He skims through the paragraphs, reading things such as _Do not pet, poke or otherwise touch The Avis; it will anger it_. Phil looks at the sculpture and is once again stunned by how realistic and beautifully crafted it is. 

And this time he swears he sees it blink as he stares at it. He looks down and reads again, catching phrases like _Do not look The Avis directly in the eyes; it will feel disrespected_. 

Cold dread rushes through his entire body as he realises that he’s done both of those things.

“Dan?”

“Yeah?” Dan’s standing by the stairs and has been looking at his phone every few minutes, presumably trying to will their car to appear right this second. Phil feels like there’s a different energy hiding in the corners of the house now, snaking around the rafters and dripping down like a poison, smelling like rotten meat.

“Read this?” His voice shakes and so does his hand as he holds out the booklet for Dan. 

Dan skims through it, he’s a quick reader but he’s taking his time, undoubtedly getting caught on some of the same sentences Phil read too.

“I don’t believe this.” Dan shakes his head like he’s trying to shake his thoughts. “It’s not a real thing. It can’t be real.” He looks up and his eyes meet Phil’s. There’s fear and uncertainty kicking up a storm in them.

Phil whispers, “I think it is.”

Dan’s stare drifts to the sculpture behind him. 

“ _Phil!_ ” he yells.

Phil whirls around, heart caught in his throat, and when he sees the sculpture, he falls back into Dan’s chest.

The bird has folded out its wings, stretching them wide and the light coruscates on the tips of the feathers. Its beak is frozen open, eyes staring intently at them. 

Dan’s phone bings. They both shriek.

“The fucking car,” Dan says.

They don’t waste a second grabbing hold of their bag and slamming the front door behind them as they run to the car parked at the end of the cobbled path.

Neither of them notice the way the bird sculpture turns its head to watch them run out.

The driver keeps glancing at them in the rearview mirror but for once Phil doesn’t care how crazy they come across to a stranger so he calls his mum and he doesn’t hang up before they’re back in London again. 

Being surrounded by the brownish blocks of flats and busy people milling about on the streets and the black cabs on every street corner makes the thought of the grandiose house in the middle of nowhere feel less real and much more like a distant dream. 

When Phil tries to picture the patio, the image is hazy in the corners. Only the dread clinging to the memories seems to be real. 

Dan reaches out and pokes Phil’s thigh. 

“Being back home now, it feels like it wasn’t even real,” he says. Phil sneaks his pinky around Dan’s and holds on. 

“Mum said the place _was_ kind of weirdly cheap.”

Dan laughs.

“Phil, always with the money.”

“I’m just saying!” 

It’s good to be home again with Dan smiling by his side. Somewhere in the back of Phil’s mind, there’s still a replay of a scream and dark gashes on white skin and feathers floating in the air.

Neither of them notice the birds sitting in every tree along the road they’re driving on.

Neither of them notice the birds sitting on the rooftops of the buildings they drive past.

Neither of them notice how the birds are all staring directly at them, heads following them in one synchronized move as their car turns down their street.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I'm on tumblr too at [bie-lovers](https://bie-lovers.tumblr.com/) if you want to say hi, but no pressure :)  
> You can also give this fic a [reblog/like](https://bie-lovers.tumblr.com/post/179495935531/avium) on tumblr if you want to! :)


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